Finite Maneuver and STK Components 2019 r2

First, we now validate our code against .NET Core, which will allow you to bundle our libraries in a .NET Core application with confidence that they will work as they do with the standard .NET framework.

As discussed in our previous blog, maintaining parity between STK Components and STK Desktop is a priority for our team, and to further that goal we brought the capability to model atmospheric refraction over to STK Components. We tweaked the whole communications system to incorporate atmospheric refraction and we included several models:

EffectiveRadiusAtmosphericRefractionModel

ItuRP834Version4AtmosphericRefractionModel

SpaceControlFacilityAtmosphericRefractionModel

Moving up through the atmosphere into space, we have the next set of interesting features: finite maneuver and access-based stopping conditions. These two features expand the capabilities of the Segment Propagation Library, a library that simulates high fidelity space craft trajectory.

The finite maneuver feature allows the orbital analyst to accurately simulate a mission wherein a maneuver of some type (for example, a thruster burn) is performed over a measurable quantity of time. In order to make maneuver design easy, we included a segment list operator, SeedFiniteManeuverOperator, which creates a finite maneuver from a simple impulsive maneuver.

Our final feature mention, access-based stopping conditions, allow the planner to start propagation, stop propagation, or simply detect access classification changes when simulating a mission. The input access query can be as simple as visibility to an object (for example, visibility from a satellite to a ground station), or as complex as the mission requires.

For a complete listing of new features, bug fixes, and improvements made in this release, visit the What’s New page.